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operation and thats a good goal. I think we really need to regulate that so that it happens <br />correctly. But you know, tourism is not a noisy activity. Were not talking about cheering a <br />football game. Tourism is a quiet activity. People walk around, you tell them about your <br />operation, theyre in relatively small numbers and the trafficimpact can be mitigated by <br />encouraging the Ag tourism operator to bring people in, in vans. In my write upI advanced the <br />suggestion that maybe the size of the vehicle should be dictated by the size of the access road. <br />And the example I use, if its a 20 foot paved road excluding shoulders then perhaps 1.2 times <br />the pavement would be the limit of the size of the vehicle and limit it to2 axles. So you get a 24 <br />foot van. A 24 foot van, 1.2 times the pavement width is the maximum length of the van that <br />you can allow to this Ag tourism operation, thats what Im suggesting. A 24 foot van might be <br />able to carry as many as 12 visitors to an Ag tourism operation. Twelve visitors would normally <br />arrive in 6 cars and so if you encourage a van what youre doing is saving the infrastructure and <br />reducing the aggravated nuisance to neighbors. And so thats a good thing. And so if youre <br />going to bring a van, it brings to mind another thing. I have been told and Ive read in the zoning <br />codewhichIreadonline,thatanythingthatsnotspecificallyallowedisillegal.AndIcan <br />understand that and I can understand why in most zoning that could and should be the case. But <br />let me you an example of why perhaps we should rethink this. Consider the internet 10 years <br />ago in 1995 which was in its infancy. If there had been a Planning Commission or Planning <br />Department who had control of the internet and they said only those things that are named are <br />permitted, all we would have today is e-mails and spam. And I dont mean the kind you mix <br />with eggs. It would be horrible and all these young geniuses who came up with this enormous <br />creativity wouldnt have happened. We wouldnt have the internet as we know it today. Now <br />we dont have an internet kind of operation here on this island but its the same thing. This is an <br />infant industry. I indicated by some of the attachments to my letter that organizations have been <br />working on this for quite a few years. The Hawaii Island Economic Development Board did <br />these maps that I included in 1991 and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the CETAR has been <br />conducting Ag tourism workshops for 3 years that I know of, maybe more, I havent been able to <br />find out exactly. All these things have been illegal. Theyve all been illegal to date until this <br />courageous attempt to regulate and to define Ag tourism and thats why I think the Bill is great <br />and its really needed. I would really like to see when I said Id like to turn it upside down, I <br />would really like to see young geniuses, entrepreneurs, people who havent thought about Ag <br />tourism before be able to come up with creative ideas. And if in this Section 25, we said the only <br />things that are illegal are those that are named because I think we can name them. And then let <br />people come up with creative ways to enhance our island lifestyle. I think it would be a totally <br />new approach to zoning. I think that this new approach would have tax dollars flowing into the <br />County coffers and there would be plenty of money to regulate the very few who need regulation <br />because they were out of control. It wouldnt happen very much because agriculture generally is <br />a small business. But its changing and thats why Id like to see our thinking expanded. Its <br />changing during that same period 1995 to the present, the size; Im interested in coffee so I know <br />these statistics. The size of a coffee farm on this island, not just Kona but island-wide has grown <br />from 3.26 acres to 5.86 acres over 10 years. Who would have thought? Nobody could have <br />imagined that because its such a labor intensive activity. So since we couldnt plan that we <br />cant effectively plan the gross volume that a farm should have or the total number of visitors <br />that we should permit. Also, switching gears a little bit, agriculture is about food. Coffee is <br />about food, honey is about food, vanilla is about food. How can you have Ag tourism that <br />doesnt allow the operator to serve food. To me it is like saying, well you can go to a football <br />game, but you cant wear a hat. There are all kinds of examples I can use for that. I believe that <br />9 <br />EXHIBIT E <br /> <br />